A couple in Sweetwater, Texas had a lot of potted plants,
and during a recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to
protect them from a possible freeze. It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was
hidden in one of the plants and when it had warmed up, it slithered out and the
wife saw it go under the sofa. She let out a very loud scream.
The husband, who was taking a shower, ran out into the
living room naked to see what the problem was.
She told him there was a snake under the sofa. He got
down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the
family dog came and cold nosed him on the rear. He thought the snake had bitten
him and he fainted.
The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house,
so she called on a neighbor man. He volunteered to capture the snake. He armed himself
with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch. Soon he decided it
was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief.
An ambulance was again called when it was determined that
the injury required hospitalization. The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw
her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed
he had been bitten by the snake. She went to the kitchen, brought back a
small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat.
By now the police had arrived. They saw the unconscious
man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They
were about to arrest them all, when the two women tried to explain how it all
happened over a little green snake.
The ambulance arrived and took away the neighbor and his
sobbing wife. Just then the little snake crawled out from under the couch. One
of the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the
leg of the end table that was on one side of the sofa. The table fell
over and the lamp on it shattered and as the bulb broke, it started a fire in
the drapes.
The other policeman tried to beat out the flames and fell
through the window into the yard on top of the family dog, who startled, jumped
up and raced out into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and
smashed into the parked police car and set it on fire. Meanwhile, the burning drapes had spread to the walls and
the entire house was blazing.
Neighbors had called the fire department and the arriving
fire truck had started raising his ladder when they were halfway down the
street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires and pulled out the
electricity and disconnected telephones in a ten-square city block area.
Time passed...
Both men were discharged from the hospital. The house was
rebuilt. The police acquired a new car, and all was right with the world.
About a year later the original couple were watching TV
and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The husband asked his
wife if she thought they should bring in their plants for the night.
She shot him...
